Bob Nickas
Is Peter Halley the Elvis of Abstraction?
'80s titan Peter Halley's current exhibition at Greene Naftali comes with some surprising bells and whistles, but is it anything genuinely new, or a misjudged attempt at an Elvis-style comeback?
McDermott & McGough's Oscar Wilde Tribute Skewers Our Troubled Present
Artist duo David McDermott and Peter McGough are famous for their willful resistance to modern technology and the relentless march of "progress." In a tribute to Oscar Wilde, the pair remembers an iconic figure still capable of whipping up controversy.
A Picasso Painting Could Get Auctioned Off for $140 Million in May
Does someone who buys a painting for $140 million simply take out their checkbook and ask for a pen? Do they swipe their American Express Centurion? Do armored cars from Brinks pull up in front of Christie's, laden with gold bars?
Trompe L’Oeil
What do photographs want from us? Why won’t they leave us alone? We create them, and they surround us, hold us captive, demand and extract psychic ransom. We allow ourselves to be overtaken by them and then wonder why we can’t stop taking them, or look...
Komplaint Dept. - Oswald and Dallas… Let Them See What They Have Done
The legend of Lee Harvey Oswald still looms large in Dallas.
Komplaint Dept. George W. Bush: Even the President of the United States Must Sometimes Have to Paint Naked
At least Bush is honest about his abilities, which is more than can be said for the "respectable" artists we're meant to take seriously.
Komplaint Dept. - Self-Help: The Enemy Within
After almost single-handedly defining the pissed indifference of No Wave in late-70s New York with Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Lydia Lunch is now a self-help guru in Ojai, California.
Komplaint Dept. - Trust Never Sleeps
The government is with us 24/7, on the other side of the bed, night after night, listening in case we mumble something in our sleep. Might NSA also stand for No Strings Attached?
Komplaint Dept. - Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, Part II
J.G. Ballard's short fiction, "Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan," is a remarkable and remarkably prescient piece written in 1967, 13 years prior to Reagan's nomination as his party's candidate for president.
Komplaint Dept. - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Anna Wintour
"Pink is punk" reveals that the New York fashion industry and its sometime institutional handmaiden, the Costume Institute at the Met, its curators and the tacit captain of both ships, Anna Wintour, wouldn't know what punk is or was if it bit them on...